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Once more unto the breach, dear friends - it's EVA-Trek time!  This month's episode marks the half-way point of the series, and concludes the series' second narrative arc.  This is one I've been wanting to write for a long time - a direct crossover with the characters of one of the franchise's best series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  We've got our Nerv crew interacting with quite a few of the denizens of DS9, and we're gonna learn a few things about our cast as well.

Please stick around after the conclusion of the episode for a very important announcement about the immediate future of EVA-Trek.

And now, sit back and relax... the human adventure is about to continue.

ACT NOTES:

• Title Page: Olatunde Osunsanmi is a producer-director on Star Trek: Discovery.
• Page 1, Scene 1: Three gold pips is a full commander rank under the Starfleet uniform code at this time in the 24th century.
• Page 1, Scene 2: Hopefully my description of Texas Hold 'Em is correct, I don't play it myself, so I had to do some research on it in order to make it work.
• Page 2: As established on TNG, the First Officer and Ship's Counselor conduct annual performance reviews on the crew and give promotion recommendations to the Captain.
• Page 3: Depending on the vessel, there are typically 3-4 duty shifts for the crew - alpha, beta, gamma, and delta.  Alpha shift is the "day shift," typically manned by the ship's senior officers.  Delta shift is the "night shift."
• Page 5: Refer to episode 105 for Kaji's meeting with Section 31 operative Luther Sloan.

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ACT NOTES:

• Page 7, Scene 5: Morn, the ubiquitous and (seemingly) silent Lurian trader, has been known to be a bit of a ladies' man.
• Page 8.1: Around this time, Rom is still slaving away as a menial worker at Quark's Bar.  Later this year, Rom instigates a strike for unfair working conditions in DS9: "Bar Association."
• Page 8.2: Saurian brandy comes in a rather distinct bottle, seen as early as TOS: "The Enemy Within."
• Page 10, Scene 5: The difference in Dax's personality refers to the inconsistent ways the DS9 staff wrote her during the first couple seasons before they finally figured out who Jadzia was supposed to be.
• Page 14: Since Garak is the best liar in the Alpha Quadrant, it's pretty easy to create an incident in his backstory and still have it work canonically.

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ACT NOTES:

• Page 19.1: Jake's referring to the trip the Defiant will take in the second episode of DS9's fourth season, "The Visitor," which is one of the series' best installments.
• Page 19.2: Ben Sisko has a habit of breaking out Hungarian food whenever he tries to win someone over.
• Page 19.3: Thanks to writer Michael Piller, Sisko is probably the biggest baseball fan in the 24th century.
• Page 21, Scene 12: Gagh is a delightful Klingon dish consisting of serpent worms, served alive, though it could be stewed or served cold.
• Page 21, Scene 13: Andorians were one of the founding alien species of the Federation, and have a tendency to be hot-tempered, belying their cool, blue exteriors.  On Enterprise, the character of Shran tended to call humans "pinkskins" as a pejorative.  In the role of Barfly, I kinda hear Fred Tatasciore's voice for it - better known as Lt. Shaxs from Star Trek: Lower Decks.
• Page 24.1: Initially, I was going to have them taking part in the battle of Iwo Jima... but quickly realized having Japanese characters fighting against Japanese soldiers wouldn't look good.
• Page 24.2: Continuing a running joke on DS9 where writer Ira Steven Behr would refer to John Wayne movies, but then the characters would have no idea who he was.
• Page 25: Any good Ferengi tries to get all the profit he possibly can.
• Page 27, Scene 15: I imagine the Bajoran Monk sounds suspiciously like Yui Ikari...
• Page 27, Scene 17: The tears of the prophets, or orbs, are a byproduct of the mysterious non-corporeal entities who live in the Bajoran wormhole.  This particular one is the Orb of Prophecy and Change.

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ACT NOTES:

• Page 30, Scene 24: There's a bit of backstory I wrote in the series' writers' guide about some... things Misato, Ritsuko, and Kaji got up to in their Academy days.  Maybe one day there'll be a spin-off about it.
• Page 32, Scene 24: Swaford is a single malt Scotch whiskey, first seen in PIC: "Seventeen Seconds."
• Page 32, Scene 25: Never imagined I'd have to research military hardware for this series, but here we are...
• Page 33: Felix, of course, would later write a few holoprograms for Bashir, including his James Bond knockoff adventure seen in DS9: "Our Man Bashir."

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ACT NOTES:

• Page 39, Scene 29: Picking up on the copious book collection Mari has in Eva 3.0+1.0, I carried that trait of hers over to this timeline.
• Page 42, Scene 32: Romulan Ale is such a powerful intoxicant, it's outright banned in the Federation, though clever folks manage to sneak it in anyway.
• Page 47, Scene 35: Misato's tousle with the Andorians is inspired by a barfight in John Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.

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ACT NOTES:

• Page 50, Scene 41: Whereas synthehol is used onboard starships, Quark's bar stocks the real stuff... which includes the very real hangovers afterwards.
• Page 52, Scene 41: The night before at Quark's you may well have seen Jet Black and Spike Spiegel, Kasidy Yates, Mal Reynolds, Captain Yurika Misumaru and Lt. Akito Tenkawa, and Captain Morgan Bateson amongst the crowd.
• Page 53, Scene 43: I was tipping this all along, but DS9 is where Misato picked up her Raktajino addiction.
• Page 54: Cardassians use data rods in their tech, as opposed to the isolinear chip in Federation design.
• Page 55, Scene 46: Ochazuke is basically green tea over white rice, a common hangover cure in Japan according to my research.
• Page 56, Scene 46: If one were to look at the Alpha Quadrant map, Nerv would have to take quite the detour around the Cardassian Demilitarized Zone if they kept their course along the ecliptic.  By thinking three-dimensionally, it makes more sense to take the ship over Cardassian space and save time.

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Scene 5: INT. QUARK'S

Cast Photo: Lt. Junior Grade Asuka L. Soryu

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Well, that does it for yet another episode.  I can hardly believe I've managed to get the show to this point - twelve episodes!  There was a time when I didn't even think it was going to be possible for me to write even five episodes.  That being said, I'm sad to say that I will have to place EVA-Trek on temporary hiatus.

Why, might you ask?  Well, if you've been paying attention to current entertainment news in the US, the Writers Guild of America is on strike.  Studios have gradually been making it more and more difficult for writers to even earn a living, while the greedy CEOs have been taking record profits for themselves.  Just last year, the CEOs of the major studios took home collectively more pay that the twenty thousand members of the Guild!

Because the form in which I write EVA-Trek owes its very existence to screenwriters and the work the Guild has done to support the industry, I'm going to suspend the release of any new episodes during the duration of the strike.  I could not, in good conscience, continue to release new scripts.  I may not be in the Guild or even part of the film industry, but that would make me feel like I'm crossing the picket line.

So, what does this mean for the show?  Everything will stay up as it is, there just won't be any new episodes released until such time the negotiations between the studios and the WGA reach an amicable solution and the strike ends.  Hopefully, that's not too long, but it seems doubtful at this current moment.  I have it in mind to write a couple short stories in prose format, and I might also release parts of the EVA-Trek writers guide - at least the parts that aren't spoilerific for the back half of the series.

This is Allansfirebird, signing off for now.  See you out there...